The Latin versions of Aristotle's Categoriae have never received much attention from the editors of the Greek text. J. Th. Buhle (Arist. Op. Omn. i, Bipont. 1791) and Th. Waitz (Arist. Organ, i, Lpz., 1844) availed themselves of Latin texts, but in a very unsatisfactory way; and since them the Latin field has remained unexplored throughout the last hundred years, in which both Hellenists and Orientalists have done much to increase our knowledge of the textual tradition of the Categ. It is the purpose of these pages to give a summary account of the Latin tradition and to contribute to a revision of the Greek text by a collation of Boethius' recently discovered translation with the best printed Greek and Oriental sources.

Although the decision of Pericles to abandon Attica to devastation in 431 has often been severely criticized, the conviction of Thucydides that his defensive strategy was sound has been widely accepted during the last half-century. On the other hand, the offensive side of his strategic plan, consisting mainly of using his fleet to raid coastal districts of the Peloponnese, has tended to be dismissed as unimportant by modern writers, while a few have condemned it as pointless and wasteful. Because Thucydides devotes so little space to these raids, it is tempting to regard them as minor operations, but his careful record of the naval and military resources engaged, together with his statement that the force which Pericles commanded in 430 was approximately equal to that sent to Sicily in 415 (6. 31. 2–3), shows that they were on a substantial scale. Their influence upon the course of the war was slight, but if Periclean strategy is to be fully appreciated, it is clearly important to inquire why they were undertaken.

The peace concluded between Athens and Persia at the close of the Persian Wars (c. 449 B.C.), and usually known as the Peace of Callias, has been the subject of a new investigation by Wade-Gery, which is clearly destined to serve as the basis of further discussion of its problems. In the present article I shall confine myself to one point of special interest arising out of a novel clause which Wade-Gery reads into the treaty and formulates, exempli gratia, as follows: ‘In the area west of Sardis inhabited by Greeks, the King shall send no functionaries nor exercise any authority: his sole right shall be a yearly tribute of a fixed amount based on the survey of Artaphernes in 493.’

Although students of the fifth century A.D. have not been slow to recognize the merits of the ͉στορ⋯α Βυζαντιακ⋯ of Priscus, few efforts seem to have been made to under-stand this historian's methods of composition. The purpose of the present note is to indicate that the literary fashions of his time have exercised an unfortunate influence on at least one part of Priscus' work.

In an article published in the C.Q. of October 1937 I collected instances of the use of colloquial words and expressions in the dialogue passages of Euripides. It was there noted that a few of these expressions also appear in Aeschylus and Sophocles, and the purpose of the present study is to collect these, together with other instances of colloquialism which are found in the two earlier tragedians and not in Euripides. The colloquial element in the language of Aeschylus and Sophocles is, of course, much smaller than in Euripides, but is perhaps greater than is sometimes supposed, and the topic has apparently not been treated elsewhere.

Plutarch in his Life of Agis (chapter 11) describes the plots by which Lysandrus the ephor contrived to depose King Leonidas II. He meant to use against him one of the Spartan laws which forbade a member of the royal houses from begetting children by a foreign woman, and another by which he who went out of Sparta with a view to settling abroad was liable to the death penalty. But though apparently a case could be made out against Leonidas under these charges, Lysandrus did not simply proceed with the prosecution. After instructing confederates who would bring the case, he with his fellow ephors ‘waited for the sign’. What this meant Plutarch explains in these words: ἔστι δ⋯ τοι⋯νδε· δι' ⋯τ⋯ν1 ⋯νν⋯α1 λαβ⋯ντες οἱ ἔϕοροι ν⋯κτα καθαρ⋯ν κα⋯ ⋯σ⋯ληνον, σιωπῇ καθ⋯ζονται πρ⋯ς τ⋯ν οὐραν⋯ν ⋯ποβλ⋯ποντες. ⋯⋯ν οὖν ⋯κ μ⋯ρους τιν⋯ς εἰς ἔτερον μ⋯ρος ⋯στ⋯ρ δι⋯ξῃ, κρ⋯νουσι τοὺς βασιλεῖς, ὠς περ⋯ τ⋯ θεῖον ⋯ξαμαρτ⋯νοντας, κα⋯ καταπα⋯ουσι τ⋯ς ⋯ρχ⋯ς, μ⋯χρις ἂν ⋯κ Δελϕ⋯ν ἢ Ὀλυμπας χρησμ⋯ς ἔλθῃ τοῖς ⋯λωκ⋯σι τ⋯ν βασιλ⋯ων βοηθ⋯ν.

cum prorepserunt primis animalia terris,

mutum et turpe pecus, glandem atque cubilia propter

unguibus et pugnis, dein fustibus, atque ita porro

pugnabant armis, quae post fabricauerat usus,

donec uerba, quibus uoces sensusque notarent,

nominaque inuenere; dehinc absistere bello,

oppida coeperunt munire et ponere leges,

ne quis …

uoces and sensus are not in pari materia; indeed, uoces notare is nonsense, as Gow says. The defect was first pointed out by Housman, J. Phil. xviii, pp. 5–8; his remedy was to transpose one word and read donec uerba, quibus sensus, uocesque, notarent, nominaque inuenere. I doubt if any scholar not already familiar with Housman's note could understand his Latin here without considerable analytical effort; and I cannot but think that Housman was for once demanding from a pair of commas a cabalistic virtue hardly resident in the seal of Solomon. Admittedly he supplies a long list — one page and a half—of illustrative dislocations; but in my opinion two objections remain. In the first place, ‘interlacing’ (as our Platonists now term a form of what Plato called hyperbaton) of the clauses A B in the form A B A B is quite frequent in Latin verse; but A B A B A is rare in the extreme, not to be found in Horace, not perhaps in any Latin author except Lucretius. Secondly, the insertion of uoces, ‘expressions’ generally (cf. Gow), in such a way as to disrupt the pair uerba nominaque ‘verbs and nouns’ would be awkward, and for Horace anomalous, in the most lucid of contexts; here it makes confusion worse confounded.

Although modern texts of Propertius have generally inclined to conservatism, there remains a number of cases where editors have chosen, in Housman's phrase, timidly to alter what they might without rashness have defended; or where the arguments so far advanced in favour of the best attested reading leave room for supplement.

Thus:

I. 6. 25 f. me sine, quem semper uoluit fortuna iacere,

hanc animam extremae reddere nequitiae.

extrema … nequitia Fonteine.

Sir D'Arcy Thompson's emendation of ἄνθρωπоς to ⋯νоς in several passages of the Historia Animalium (C.Q. xxxix, 1945, 54–5), and his explanation of the corruption as due to confusion between ⋯νος and an abbreviation both receive strong confirmation from a passage of Polybius, describing an allenged procession held by Demetrius of Phalerum, in which a similar emendation has already been made and widely accepted.